Applications pour in for admission under RTE, last date extended

Looking at the handsome response to admissions under the Right To Education (RTE), the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) education department has extended the last date to apply from earlier April 15 to April 18.

Primary education deputy director Dinkar Temkar said, "This year, the awareness about RTE is good. The publicity was done so well that till last date, a lot of applications were coming. Hence, we thought of extending the deadline by a few more days, so that the parents could apply. The date has now been extended till Monday. This year, more applications have come in as compared to last year."

Till April 15, BMC's education department had received as many as 5,408 applications. The first lottery round will be held on April 20, when the students will be allotted their schools.

Meanwhile, RTE activist Avisha Kulkarni said, "This time, we did not face any glitches while applying for admission online. But there are three major problems – BMC's education department has decided that instead of at help centres, verification of documents will be done at the school level after the admission is done. What if there are some issues with the documents and the schools refuse admission on that account? Will parents get enough time to correct the documents? Another problem is that no school in the Goregaon area is registered for pre-primary admissions. The last problem is that we heard a lot of fraud is happening in income certificate, which will majorly affect parents from the economically weaker sections (EWS) of the society."